By Staff
Recently I sat in the parking lot out in back of 1st Source Bank while waiting for my wife to do some banking business.
The car was facing east and I looked at the old Round Oak furnace buildings (now Ameriwood Furniture), which to me looked like they had been fairly newly painted, or maybe it was the first time I had noticed.
But one thing I did notice was under the flag up on the roof on the side of the building was some kind of a design that protruded out from the wall of the building.
If anyone knows the significance of this protrusion, I'd like to know.
Also, I noticed the modernistic chimney that replaced that big, old landmark that stood so high for all those years, with the large, black letters ROUND OAK printed on it.
I wonder if maybe they now use gas to heat the buildings instead of coal Iike was done in years past.
If so, they didn't need that grand old landmark anymore.
Another thing I noticed the other day was workmen were covering over the cement steps on the side of the Underwood Shoe Store.
I can also remember when they did it across the street to the steps that went down to Gene Corwin's barber shop.
Also, the steps on the Oppenheim building that went down to Emmett Kempton's barber shop.
I wonder why they were in the basements of these buildings? Maybe it was cheaper rent.
Another thing long gone was those old iron outside stairs like the ones that used to be on the sides of the Oppenheim building, where Jack Pollock the attorney had his law office upstairs.
Also, I can remember when George Kabrine, another Dowagiac attorney, had his office on the corner building at Front and Main and you had to go up those iron stairs on the south side of that building to his office.
And when I was a youngster many years ago, our doctor was George Herkimer. His upstairs office, I think, was on the corner of Beeson and Front and you had to climb those old black iron steps to get to it.
I read somewhere that long ago you could hear the Beckwith whistle (I guess they meant Round Oak) in Cassopolis and, if it wasn't for Dowagiac, Cass wouldn't know what time it was.